Page 53 of Saved By the Selkie

“You’ve almost convinced me,” Lir says, and I nearly startle out of my skin. I grab at Blizz, who remains dead asleep.

Lir is ice cold and his hair is wet. I wriggle away from him, but he doesn’t seem to take a hint, following me, pressing his cold cheek to mine, before he whispers hotly in my ear, “Maybe human alphas should take care of their babies.”

I glower at him as he retreats into his own bedding. “As far as I know, I only have one child.”

“Could fix that right now,” Lir responds, and I smack myself mentally for walking into the obvious set-up.

“Not in front of Blizz,” I grumble when he spreads his legs. The look on his face is downright sinful, and I’m starting to understand why selkies have the reputation they do. That mythology book talked a lot about humans being completely ensnared by their selkie loves, so much so that they’d never take another human lover. There are times when I feel like Lir has enchanted me somehow.

Even if he did, I’m not sure I’d want to break the spell.

“Not in front of my grandmother,” Anna admonishes.

Her grandmother grumbles in response, and Lir’s eyes go wide. Then he starts laughing.

I sigh. Apparently, Anna’s grandmother is a riot, but I don’t speak a lick of Kalaallisut. I miss all the jokes, and they’re never quite as good when Lir or Anna translates them.

Lir cuddles close again, glancing over his shoulder, then whispering conspiratorially, “We’ll wait until we leave here. Maybe when we get to this other boat, we can go to your cabin and—”

I suck in a sharp breath. Blizz paws at me, startled.

“What?” Lir asks.

I glance at him, then swallow tightly. “You’re going to have to pretend to be human,” I tell him.

“Wasn’t I already doing that?”

I wince. “I mean …” I glance him up and down. “I’m not going to be the captain. I’m not going to be able to protect you.”

Lir gives me a bored look as he leans on his hand. “So?”

I wince. His indifference hurts, because it emphasizes that I wasn’t really doing a good job of protecting him before. “Lir, I mean—what are you to me?”

“Your mate.”

“Humans don’t have mates.”

Lir squints at me. “Well, what then?”

“Just tell ’em you’re bosom buddies, and no one will ask questions,” Porthos rumbles from the other side of the room. That gets some giggles from Anna’s family.

“And how are we gonna explain a baby?”

“Have Lir pretend to be your wife then,” Anna says, “and let the rest of us get some shut-eye.”

“Ya could say you found the babe,” Porthos advises.

Lir and I both glance at Blizz. Lir looks at me. “That will never work,” he says. “He looks too much like you.”

“He looks too much like you,” I retort. Honestly, as a selkie, Lir has a very distinctive look, and it’s very obvious Blizz is related to him.

“Wife,” I say finally, sighing. There’s just no other way around it.

“He’s kinda a woman anyway,” Porthos says, and Lir whips around with frightening speed. I clutch Blizz, half afraid that Lir’s going to smack us with his pelt.

Luckily, Anna is on top of things, cracking her hand over Porthos’s thick skull. “That’s insulting to Lir and women alike,” she says. “He’s a selkie.”

I smile, remembering how Lir didn’t even know what a woman was when we first met on Mythos. Selkies just don’t have the concept, I guess—although their omegas have a similar role as human women, bearing children and raising them.